Botfactory SV2 Desktop PCB Printer

BotFactory has a vision to revolutionize the electronics industry by bringing the factory to the desktop, creating a world where engineers, researchers and students can prototype printed electronics right there and then. BotFactory SV2 is their latest generation, capable of printing multilayer circuits, dispensing paste and pick-and-placing components within a small, 50 x 50 cm footprint.

Inkjet Printing

New inkjet system, featuring more than 300 nozzles and a much smaller droplet size, allowing for thinner lines

Larger ink capacity for more boards per cartridge

Cleaning station to automatically maintain nozzles and extend cartridge life-span

Wider printhead, allowing for an increased sweep across the substrate and faster printing

Dispense Finer

Compatible with single-part epoxy

New motor, gearing and encoder allows for finer control in dispensing process

Micro-dispensing tips

Cleaning station for automated tip-wiping

BotFactory has a vision to revolutionize the electronics industry by bringing the factory to the desktop, creating a world where engineers, researchers and students can prototype printed electronics right there and then. BotFactory SV2 is their latest generation, capable of printing multilayer circuits, dispensing paste and pick-and-placing components within a small, 50 x 50 cm footprint.

BotFactory fabricates and assembles printed circuit boards in a way radically diff erent from the familiar, stencil-andetch methods. The conductive traces are printed using a conductive, nanoparticle silver ink onto a substrate (FR-4 or even flexible Kapton®), and then a polymer ink is printed over the traces. Vias are printed using an additive process from the bottom to the top of the board. As CTO and Founder Carlos Ospina explains, “People always ask us ‘how can you create a multilayer circuit without drilling?!’, but at BotFactory we know that drilling is just one of many possible ways to connect a top layer to a bottom one”.

Each BotFactory SV2 comes with three heads to perform the printing, dispensing and assembly process. After printing the traces, the printing head is swapped out for the dispensing head and conductive glue deposited onto the pads. The fi nal step is assembly where a pickand-place head equipped with a vacuum pump picks up parts from a tape-strip holder and use an upwards-facing camera to align the part and place it in the correct spot.

BotFactory took many lessons from their first product, Squink, and integrated them into SV2. The primary focus was on the printing technology, leveraging new inkjetting methods and curing techniques to print fi ner conductive traces, thinner insulating ink layers and overall speed. SV2 will be able to print more than two layers with an estimated trace width of 200 microns. Of course, with thinner lines comes fi ner dispensing, which required a major change to dispensing along with the conductive glues utilized; SV2 will now include a one-part epoxy instead of a two-part as with Squink. Pick-and-place supports 10 times more parts, along with tape-strip packaging and 0402-sized components, allowing users to explore small-batch production from within their workshop.